Quote

My worst character flaw that I'm conscious of is that I tend to think my way into circles instead of resolving anything. It's paralyzing and boring for people around me.

David Foster Wallace

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David Foster Wallace
Age: 45 †
Born: 1962
Born: February 21
Died: 2008
Died: February 12
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Ithica
New York
David Wallace
Way
Boring
Think
Tend
Thinking
Conscious
People
Instead
Paralyzing
Worst
Resolving
Around
Flaw
Character
Flaws
Anything
Circles

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I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art.
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There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says 'Morning, boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes 'What the hell is water?'
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The way I think about things and experience things is not particularly linear, and it's not orderly, and it's not pyramidical, and there are a lot of loops.
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I find in myself a need to get very away.
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Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever ore power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
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The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
David Foster Wallace
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Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.
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Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith. . . . Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care.
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Truly decent, innocent people can be taxing to be around.
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No single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.
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What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?
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I believe I want adult sanity, which seems to me the only unalloyed form of heroism available today.
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The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.
David Foster Wallace
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No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.
David Foster Wallace
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Look, man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?
David Foster Wallace
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Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.
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Some words have to be explicitly uttered, Lenore. Only by actually uttering certain words does one really DO what one SAYS. 'Love' is one of those words, performative words. Some words can literally make things real.
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But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.
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People, unless they're paying attention, tend to confuse fanciness with intelligence or authority.
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The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.
David Foster Wallace